Many of Stone's films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such that they were considered contentious at the times of their releases. They often combine different camera and film formats within a single scene as evidenced in JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon.[2]

Stone attended Trinity School in New York City before his parents sent him away to The Hill School, a college-preparatory school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. His parents were divorced abruptly while he was away at school (1962) and this, because he was an only child, marked him deeply. Stone's mother was often absent and his father made a big impact on his life; father-son relationships were to feature heavily in Stone's films.[9]

He often spent parts of his summer vacations with his maternal grandparents in France, both in Paris and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre in Seine-et-Marne. Stone also worked at 17 in the Paris mercantile exchange in sugar and cocoa — a job that proved inspirational to Stone for his film Wall Street. He speaks French fluently.[citation needed] Stone graduated from The Hill School in 1964.

Stone graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film in 1971, where his teachers included director Martin Scorsese[13] (the same year, he had a small acting role in comedy The Battle of Love's Return).[14] Stone made a short, well received 12-minute film Last Year in Viet Nam. He worked as a taxi driver, film production assistant, messenger, and salesman before making his mark in film as a screenwriter in the late '70s, in the period between his first two films as a director: horror films Seizure and The Hand.

In 1979, Stone won his first Academy Award, after adapting true-life prison story Midnight Express into a hit film for British director Alan Parker (the two would later collaborate on a 1996 movie of stage musical Evita). Stone's screenplay for Midnight Express was criticized by some for its inaccuracies in portraying the events described in the book and vilifying the Turkish people. The original author, Billy Hayes, around whom the film is set, spoke out against the film, protesting that he had many Turkish friends while in jail.[15] Stone later apologized to Turkey for over-dramatizing the script, while not repudiating the film's stark brutality or the reality of Turkish prisons.[16]

Stone wrote further features, including Brian De Palma's drug lord tale Scarface and Year of the Dragon with Mickey Rourke, before his career took off as a writer-director in 1986. Like his contemporary Michael Mann, Stone is unique in having written or co-written most of the films he has directed. In 1986, Stone directed two films back to back: the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Salvador, shot largely in Mexico, and his long in development Vietnam project Platoon, shot in the Philippines. Stone loosely based Scarface on his own addiction to cocaine, which he successfully kicked while writing the screenplay.[17]

Platoon brought Stone's name to a much wider audience. It also finally kickstarted a busy directing career, which saw him making nine films over the next decade. Alongside some negative reaction, Platoon won many rave reviews (Roger Ebert later called it the ninth best film of the 1980s), large audiences, and Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. In 2007, a film industry vote ranked it at number 83 in an American Film Institute "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies" poll of the previous century's best American movies. British TV channel Channel 4 voted Platoon as the sixth greatest war film ever made.[18]

The Doors, released in 1991, received criticism from former Doors member Ray Manzarek (keyboardist–bass player) during a question and answer session at Indiana University East (in Richmond, Indiana), in 1997. During the discussion, Manzarek stated that he sat down with Stone about The Doors and Jim Morrison for over 12 hours. Patricia Kennealy Morrison—a well known rock critic and author—was a consultant on the movie, in which she also has a cameo appearance, but she writes in her memoir Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison (Dutton, 1992) that Stone ignored everything she told him and proceeded with his own version of events. From the moment the movie was released, she blasted it as untruthful and inaccurate.[19] The other surviving former members of the band, John Densmore and Robby Krieger, also cooperated with the filming of Doors, but Krieger distanced himself from the work before the film's release. However, Densmore thought highly of the film, and in fact celebrated its DVD release on a panel with Oliver Stone.

During this same period, Stone directed one of his most ambitious, controversial and successful films to date JFK, that depicts the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. In 1991, Stone showed JFK to Congress on Capitol Hill, which helped lead to passage of the Assassination Materials Disclosure Act[20] of 1992. The Assassination Records Review Board (created by Congress to lessen, but not end the secrecy surrounding Kennedy's assassination) discussed the film, including Stone's observation at the end of the film, about the dangers inherent in government secrecy.[21] Stone published an annotated version of the screenplay, in which he cites references for his claims, shortly after the film's release.

I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn.[22]

1994 saw the release of Stone's satire of the modern media, Natural Born Killers. Originally based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, critics recognized its portrayal of violence and the intended satire on the media. Before it was released, the MPAA gave the film a NC-17 rating; this caused Stone to cut four minutes of film footage in order to obtain an R rating (he eventually released the unrated version on VHS and DVD in 2001).

Oliver Stone with Rino Barillari in "Piazza dé Ricci" exit of the restaurant "Pierluigi" in Rome – September 25, 2012

After a period from 1986–1999 where Stone released a new film at least every 1–2 years, Stone slowed down in the 2000s, though still finding some success.

In 2004, Stone directed the critically savaged Alexander. He later radically re-edited his biopic of Alexander the Great into a two-part, 3 hour 37 minute film Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut, which became one of the highest-selling catalog items from Warner Bros.[23] After Alexander, Stone went on to direct World Trade Center, based on the true story of two PAPD policemen who were trapped in the rubble and survived the September 11 attacks.

In 2007, Stone was intended to direct his fourth Vietnam War film Pinkville, about a Pentagon investigation into the My Lai Massacre of Vietnamese civilians. The film was to have been made for United Artists,[24] but the company officially cancelled the production start due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Shortly after the strike, Stone went on to write and direct the George W. Bush biopic W., that chronicles the controversial President's childhood, relationship with his father, struggles with his alcoholism, rediscovery of his Christian faith, and continues the rest of his life up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2014, Stone announced that his Martin Luther King project, which he had worked on for three years, was aborted by the producing studios, Warner Bros and DreamWorks, following the objection of King's estate to his screenplay, which deals with King's adultery. Later Stone commented in a BBC interview: "These are not rumours; these are facts and Hoover had the tapes."[26]

In 2009, Stone completed a feature-length documentary, South of the Border about the rise of progressive, leftist governments in Latin America, featuring seven presidents: Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Cuba's Raúl Castro, the Kirchners of Argentina, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and Paraguay's Fernando Lugo (all of whom hold negative views of US manipulations in South America). Stone hoped the film would get the rest of the Western world to rethink socialist policies in South America, particularly as it was being applied by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Chávez joined Stone for the premiere of the documentary at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2009.[27] Stone defended his decision not to interview Chávez's opponents, stating that oppositional statements and TV clips were scattered through the documentary and that the documentary was an attempt to right a balance of heavily negative coverage. He praised Chávez as a leader of a movement for social transformation in Latin America (the Bolivarian Revolution), along with the six other Presidents in the film. The documentary was also released in several cities in the United States and Europe in the summer of 2010.[28][29]

On March 5, 2014, Stone and teleSUR premiered the documentary film Mi Amigo Hugo (My Friend Hugo), a documentary about Venezuela's late President, Hugo Chávez, one year after his death. The film is also a "spiritual answer" and a tribute from Stone to Chávez.[41] At the end of 2014 according to a Facebook post Stone said he had been in Moscow to interview (former Ukrainian president) Viktor Yanukovych, for a "new English language documentary produced by Ukrainians". Stone reportedly also wanted to do a film on Russian president Vladimir Putin.[42]

In 1993, Stone produced a miniseries for ABC Television called Wild Palms. In a cameo, Stone appears on a television in the show discussing how the theories in his film JFK had been proven correct (the series took place in a hypothetical future, 2007). That same year, he also spoofed himself in the comedy hit Dave, espousing an (accurate) conspiracy theory about the film President's replacement by a near-identical double. In 1997, Stone published A Child's Night Dream (St. Martin's Press), a semiautobiographical novel first written in 1966–1967.

On September 15, 2008, Stone was named the Artistic Director of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.[44]

Stone has been married three times, first to Najwa Sarkis on May 22, 1971. They divorced in 1977. He then married Elizabeth Burkit Cox, an assistant in film production, on June 7, 1981.[45][46] They had two sons, Sean Stone/Ali (b. 1984) and Michael Jack (b. 1991). Sean appeared in some of his father's films while a child. Oliver and Elizabeth divorced in 1993. Stone is currently married to Sun-jung Jung, and the couple have a daughter, Tara (b. 1995).[47]

In 1999, Stone was arrested and pleaded guilty to alcohol and drug charges. He was ordered into a rehabilitation program. He was arrested again on the night of May 27, 2005 in Los Angeles for possession of an undisclosed illegal drug.[51][52] He was released the next day on a $15,000 bond.[52] In August 2005, Stone pleaded no contest and was fined $100.[53]

Stone has had an interest in Latin America since the 1980s when he made his 1986 film Salvador and later returned to make his documentary South of the Border about the left-leaning movements that had been taking hold in the region. He has expressed the view that these movements are a positive step toward political and economic autonomy for the region.[54]

According to Newsmeat and Entertainment Weekly respectively, Stone voted for Barack Obama as U.S. president in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, instead of John McCain and Mitt Romney, the GOP candidates for the presidency.[55] Stone was quoted as saying at the time: "I voted for Obama because...I think he's an intelligent individual I think he responds to difficulties well...very bright guy...far better choice yes."[56] In 2012, Stone endorsed Ron Paul for the Republican nomination for President. He said that Paul is "the only one of anybody who's saying anything intelligent about the future of the world."[57] then later: "I supported Ron Paul in the Republican primary... but his domestic policy... made no sense!"[56] In March 2016, Stone wrote on the Huffington Post his support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic nomination.[58] In September 2016, Stone said he was voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for President.[59]

A day later, Stone stated: "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity—and it was an atrocity."[62]

Two days later, Stone issued a second apology to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was accepted. "I believe he now understands the issues and where he was wrong, and this puts an end to the matter," said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.[63]

Oliver Stone is a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Stone signed a petition in support of Assange's bid for political asylum in June 2012.[64] In August 2012, he penned a New York Times op-ed with filmmaker Michael Moore on the importance of WikiLeaks and free speech.[65] Stone visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2013 and commented, "I don't think most people in the US realize how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian's case needs support." He also criticized two upcoming WikiLeaks films from Alex Gibney and Bill Condon.[66]

In June 2013, Stone and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning.[67][68]